Monday Music: I Believe in You (Dylan Cover by Alison Krauss)

Here  is a superb cover of Bob Dylan's "I Believe in You." The song first appeared on Dylan's Slow Train Coming album released in 1979. The album was the first of Dylan's "Christian albums" and it introduced him to a whole new audience. For many people, Slow Train Coming was the first Dylan album they had ever bought. At the time, Noel Paul Stookey (of  Peter, Paul & Mary fame) wrote a review of the album for Christianity Today in which he celebrated Dylan's ability to appeal to an audience that would not likely connect with the typical gospel album.

Alison Krauss's beautiful rendition is yet another example of the timelessness of Dylan's songwriting skills.

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Bearing Witness to the Times: Sanctions and Bans (A National Nursery Rhyme)

Protesters at Los Angeles International Airport
(AP photo by Reed Saxon)

                                           

Sanctions and bans,

Sanctions and bans.

The stroke of a pen

Disrupts many plans.

Plans for a future,

Plans for a life.

The rich make the rules,

The rules make the strife.

Strife in the east,

Strife in the west.

The fearful and greedy

Dictate what is best.

Best for the nation,

Best for the land;

But where will the people –

The working class stand?

They stand at the airports

With signs in their hands.

They stand up to protest

The sanctions and bans.

Sanctions and bans,

Sanctions and bans,

The courts put a kink

In the president’s plans.

Plans now upended;

Whose plans will we see?

Will they be for a people

Who yearn to breathe free?

                                 ~ CK

                                                                    *  *   *   

From my introductory post:

The best thing that poets can do is to bear witness to the times – articulate what is happening in the moment; speak to the real life experiences of your people.  I am setting myself a goal to write a poem each week that reflects what I see and experience in the life of our nation... if I can write one poem a week there will be some chronicle of our sacred/tested/doubtful union...

"Thousands protest against Trump travel ban in cities and airports nationwide"
(from The Guardian)

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Saturday Haiku: Skyways

red skies beckoning

the sand crane takes to the air

no known boundaries

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Photo by John McQuinston: Sand cranes at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Decatur, Ala.



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